10/7/2008

I’ve never lived in a battleground state during a modern-day national election where you are bombarded with political ads on an hourly basis — if not more often. But I did spend two weeks in Nevada just prior to the Nevada caucuses back in January. For the first time I experienced what it was like to see a political ad from one side or the other at EVERY commercial break of just about every program during the course of the day — not to mention the radio ads. But, what irritated me the most was the fact that the same ads ran again and again.

I doubt finances prevented the campaigns from filming more than one ad. I’m sure the ones being used had been winners in various focus group testing. But the lack of variety really led you to simply tune out what was said when you were seeing the ad for the 15th time in a single day.

McCain has now gone all in with the attack that Obama is too much of an unknown, and what we do know about his past associations should trouble all Americans.

But rather than try to cram those associations into one ad, my suggestion to the McCain camp would be that that they shoot 4-5 ads, each one of which focuses on a different shady character — and then play them in a rotation in the battleground states where they are advertising directly.

There are other characters not as well known — the Stroger machine in Cook County, especially Obama’s endorsement of John Stroger and later Todd Stroger.

Running these spots in different time slots one after another would give some depth to the charge, and provide enough information about each of these individuals that voters would get a better sense of the people that Obama has kept close to him during his years in politics.

WLS, Americans don’t give a F about Ayers. It’s still the economy. You have failed to produce incriminating and damaging points linking Obama and Ayers. BTW, Bill Ayers may be a lot of things but I think it is a little “stretchy” to call him a Terrorist. Calling him a Terrorist weakens the intent and meaning of that word. A terrorist is someone who is intent on inflicting harm on people, who also is a threat to the society. OBL is an example of a terrorist. So also his AQ network. They are the enemy. Bill Ayers? He was more of a misguided and delinquent youth who knew no better. What he did was despicable. But the big question is why did he do it? He was against the Vietnam war and felt the best way to register his disapproval was by bombing places. Was he right? No. Does that make him a Terrorist? No.

@6: No no, the whole point here isn’t what these other people did, it’s that since we can establish some kind of “connection” between the two parties, we can pretend that the connection defines both parties in the same way.

@7: You wrote: Tom, why don’t you just call everyone racist and get it over with?

Because I feel no particular need to play along with your pity party, JD. If you want to interpret every criticism made against your candidate’s messaging as a complaint against racism, that’s up to you. But it seems as absurd to me as interpreting every criticism of Obama as racist in the first place.

Ayers summed up the Weatherman philosophy as “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents — that’s where it’s really at.”

Speaking to a Weather Underground “war council” in Michigan in 1969, Dohrn gave a three-fingered “fork salute” to mass murderer Charles Manson. Calling Manson’s victims the “Tate Eight,” Dohrn gloated over the fact that actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant at the time, had been stabbed with a fork in her womb. “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!”

I wonder what Ayers/Dohrn saw in Manson that made them kindred spirits… and what do they see in Obama, now?

@10: bmeuppls writes: I wonder what Ayers/Dohrn saw in Manson that made them kindred spirits… and what do they see in Obama, now?

Masterful! You’ve taken “guilt by association” to a whole new level. Let’s spin this out:

Barack Obama served on a charity board with and received a $200 campaign contribution from…Bill Ayers, former domestic terrorist who is married to…Bernardine Dohrn, also a terrorist, who once made a sick statement relating to…Charles Manson, a murderous psychopath, who, thanks to this association, is clearly the same as…Barack Obama.

Well done, b. Guess Charles Manson should get his own 30 second commercial now too.

WLS – My guess is that each separate ad, regardless of how many times it runs, is a separate ‘buy.’ It is probably cheaper to run one ad 30 times than it is to run 2 ads 15 times each.

Brad, you are wrong about that. An ad is an ad. One ad 30 times would cost the same as 30 different ads. Once you buy the ad time, the station’s traffic department plays whatever creative you tell them to. The only increased cost is actually producing the ads, but politicals are super-cheap.

I think that this is a good point. I used to place radio ads for a major consumer product company. We had deals where we got 4 or 5 ads in every game for a sports team. The problem was, some people listen or watch every game, and I figured they got sick of our ads pretty quickly. I know that I’m sick of the ads that run in the White Sox games.

I have changed advertising strategy on a few brands, based on that experience. I’m sure that politics isn’t much different, but I bet they don’t have any non-political advertising gurus working for them.

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